One out of five people were slaves in eighteenth-century New York, and there were more slaves in the city than in any other urban area in the United States, with the possible exception of New Orleans and Charleston. Slaves farmed land in what is now the East Village, and buried their dead at a site in lower Manhattan occupied today by a federal office building.

A new exhibit at the New-York historical society is all about New York's history as a slaveholding city. Emory University Historian Leslie Harris, who is featured in an interview with NY Voices' Rafael Pi Roman, was a consultant on the exhibit.